Assessment and Testing Webinars

Assessment and Testing Webinars

Free professional development: Browse Education Week's collection of webinars on assessment and testing. These virtual broadcasts address the preparation for and administration of a wide range of exams, including those aligned with the Common Core State Standards. All webinars are accessible for a limited time after the original live streaming date. Participation certificates are not provided, but viewers receive a post-event confirmation email.

The Role of Assessment in Personalized Learning

Assessment is critical to understanding the strengths and needs of individual students. But considerations have to be made on the frequency of assessments, methods of evaluation, and interpretation of the results. When delivered effectively, assessment outcomes can inform curriculum design and make learning more targeted and meaningful for each student.

Deep-dive into the role of assessment when designing personalized learning environments. In this webinar, participants will learn:

• Best practices around when and how to assess effectively—from formative to summative and course-specific to districtwide
• Ways to interpret results and apply them strategically to curriculum design and learning paths
• Approaches for repeating and scaling personalized learning efforts through technology

College and Career Readiness: Why Current Standards Require Better Assessment

Few district interim assessments assess current college and career readiness (CCR) standards, elicit evidence of students’ understanding, use authentic texts, and require students to solve real-world problems at a high level of rigor. Finding an interim assessment that addresses the multi-dimensional intentions of the CCR standards is a challenge.

Join experts from Measured Progress as they discuss this challenge and show how better content in an interim assessment provides actionable data to support college and career readiness. In this webinar, learn about eMPower Assessments™, a cohesive solution that enables districts to:

• implement a consistent program for grades 3–8, with a direct connection to the College Board’s SAT® Suite of Assessments.
• gain early insight into students’ performance on their statewide accountability measure.
• receive reliable data they can use to make meaningful inferences about student achievement and to track academic progress toward college and career.

Student Engagement: Are Your Test Scores Valid?

What if a well-designed test isn’t enough to guarantee a valid score? Research indicates that the level of student engagement with a test impacts the score, but how would educators recognize or measure that engagement–especially at a high level? Exciting new research from NWEA provides the answers. Now, NWEA researchers can quantify student engagement with their signature assessment, MAP Growth. In this webinar, experts from NWEA explain rapid guessing behavior, the research behind it, and why it’s important to detect. You will also learn how the MAP Growth assessment alerts educators in real time when students are guessing on a test–and reports on it in test results. Explore with the participants why student engagement impacts test results, which groups of students tend to be rapid guessing, and how your assumptions about student growth could be impacted.

Tests may change in many ways, but for students, the stress of taking one doesn’t go away. Join us for a discussion of what the research shows about how anxiety hurts performance, what simple interventions may have the potential to short-circuit test stress, and how the Austin, Texas, district is using mindfulness and other techniques to help students maintain a healthy approach to assessment.

Alan November on Strategies to Enhance Student Self-Assessment

Join education thought leader Alan November for “Strategies to Enhance Student Self-Assessment,” a live, research-backed webinar that will highlight the importance of this core competency for 21st-century learners. Alan will offer strategies for helping students develop a strong skill set around self-assessment, and present examples of integrating student self-assessment into various classroom teaching and learning scenarios.

You will gain a deeper understanding of student self-assessment, as well as methods and strategies for developing strong self-assessment skills in today’s learners.

From Teacher to Superintendent: Data-Driven Decisions Simplified

Fast, efficient, and useful—NWEATM reports give you valuable information, no matter what your role as an educator. This 50-minute webinar from NWEA shows teachers, staff, and leaders how to leverage assessment data to meet their goals.

• Learn how to improve instruction and personalize learning with the MAP® Student Profile report.
• Understand how to identify skill gaps to focus instruction and then monitor progress and skills mastery with Skills Navigator®.
• See how the MAP Insights and Instructional Insights reports provide you with instant analysis of your schools and district; the narrative reporting tells a larger story and makes it easy to understand the results.
• You’ll also see how the OECD Test for Schools report provides crucial insights to help drive your school improvement efforts and ensure students are prepared for the global economy.

Acing the Test: Strategies for Supporting Student Achievement

What will the next generation of high-stakes assessments require? The answer might surprise you.

Learn how teaching strategies that provide access to complex, content-rich, grade-level texts effectively position students to be successful readers, communicators—and even test takers.

In this interactive webinar, David Liben of Student Achievement Partners and Rachel Stack of Great Minds highlight how book-based lessons engage all learners, build knowledge, and set students up for academic achievement. Using real-world examples, these leaders will demonstrate how you can leverage the power of close reading, curated texts, and vocabulary practice as paths toward student mastery.

Leave the test prep packets and disconnected basals behind and focus on how meaningful instruction, based in knowledge-building text, are the key to making the grade.

The Every Student Succeeds Act, signed into law in December, is poised to shake up the landscape for states and districts on everything from school accountability to testing, teacher policy, and funding. This latest version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act shifts significant K-12 responsibility away from the federal level. States will set their own academic goals for students, within certain federal boundaries, and have more control over how to turn around low-performing schools. But there are plenty of other changes to come, and regulations under the law are still being hammered out, while members of Congress watch the rollout, many of them looking to keep the U.S. Department of Education on a tight leash. Join members of the Education Week government and policy staff for a conversation about key aspects of ESSA and what’s in store for state and district leaders.

Prevention to Intervention: Formative Assessment Reimagined

A new breed of technology is driving a shift in how we view and use formative assessment. When fully realized, educators will be engaged, empowered, and equipped to interrupt, disrupt, and prevent the failure to learn versus treating failed learning. Beyond information, formative assessment reimagined provides in-time insight and intelligence of, for, and by the learner to adapt and adjust learning, as the learner is learning—not after instruction. To that end, this webinar will focus on three essential learnings:

1) The what, why, and how of reimagined formative assessment;
2) The transformational impact of instructional and assessment integration; and
3) The results of assessing leading rather than trailing indicators of learning.

The Power of Data and Digital Resources: Boosting Science Achievement Through Informed Instruction

What role can digital resources play in driving engagement, authentic understanding, and incremental gains in K-12 science? Join this conversation between education leaders as they reveal how digital resources have been a key driver in their summative and formative assessment efforts. Barb Reinert from Scottsdale Unified School District, Ariz., will share how her team has garnered widespread science gains by helping educators prepare students for state assessments using a targeted collected of digital resources. Luis Solano from Collier County Public Schools, Fla., will explain how his educators are using technology enhanced tools in classrooms to maximize formative assessment efforts and provide students with a relevant and engaging learning experience. Classroom educator Mary Marshall will also share the realities around assessment in the classroom and how she is using Science Techbook to engage students and enhance learning.

Leveraging Analytics and Assessment to Close Achievement Gaps

Racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps often come to educators' attention in test scores, but they don't start there. A closer look at both assessment and other student data can help administrators recognize red flags in class access, school climate, parent involvement, and other areas that could be undermining their efforts to close achievement gaps.

Join John B. Diamond, author of the 2015 book Despite the Best Intentions: How Racial Inequality Thrives in Good Schools, and Ari Gerzon-Kessler, principal of Monaco Elementary in Colorado, who is using data to identify and correct longterm inequities in his school.

Go Digital With Formative Assessment & Critical Thinking

21st century learning embraces the use of digital tools to enhance instruction. In this webinar, we’ll explore research-based practices utilizing digital tools to formatively assess and support critical thinking. We’ll also address how this integration can help monitor, improve, and maximize instructional opportunities. Based on formative assessment data, teachers can ensure students make progress towards the mastery of all standards. Webinar participants will be challenged to develop an implementation plan to immediately integrate the tools into instruction to support critical thinking and timely formative assessment. Join us to share your ideas about technology integration that spur innovative thinking.

Using Formative Assessment to Influence Planning, Guide Teaching, and Support Student Learning

Assessment is important and must be connected to classroom teaching every single day. As we all embark on the implementation of ESSA, this statement should not be considered an endorsement of teaching to one or more end-of-the-year summative assessments. Rather, we seek to emphasize the important role of formative assessment in the teaching and learning process. This distinction is particularly relevant because even though formative assessment has been discussed for over five decades, it remains elusive to many.

In this webinar we will present a collection of classroom-based formative assessment techniques for elementary and middle grade mathematics teachers to not only consider, but also to use effectively—everyday. Our guest, Skip Fennell, will also discuss how particular formative assessment techniques can bridge to summative assessments and the preparation for such measures. Fennell will address the suggestion from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics’ Principles to Actions: Ensuring Mathematical Success for All (2014) that educators leverage assessment opportunities to improve teaching and learning at the classroom and school level.

Dynamic vs. Static Assessment: A Growth Mindset Perspective

Assessment should inform teaching. It should be continuous, pick up data on mathematical growth and development, and provide information about the “zone of proximal development” (Vygotsky 1978). To do so, it needs “to foresee where and how one can anticipate that which is just coming into view in the distance” (Streefland 1985, 285). It needs to capture genuine mathematizing—children’s strategies, their ways of modeling realistic problems, and their understanding of key mathematical ideas. Bottom line, it needs to capture where the child is on the landscape of learning—where she has been, what her struggles are, and where she is going: it must be dynamic. This session will examine ways to assess development dynamically to inform teaching and to document the learning journey.

Students in Charge: Self-Assessment and Learning to Learn

Schools are awash in learning goals, data, and information about how students are doing. But often, the students themselves are left in the dark about what they're learning and why, where they stand, and what they've got to do to get to the next step. Increasingly, teachers and schools are trying to help students own their own learning process by giving them time and tools to self-assess.

Join us as we define student self-assessment and explore its tie to cognitive science and the growth mindset, explore strategies for helping students self-assess, and lay out challenges and misconceptions about student self-assessment.

Presenters:

• Heidi Andrade, associate professor, School of Education, University at Albany, State University of New York
• Angela Fremont-Appel, art teacher, New York City Public SchoolsModerator:
• Jaclyn Zubrzycki, contributing writer, Education Week

Closing Math Learning Gaps With Data & Formative Assessment

When combining digital curriculum that provides formative assessment data with everyday instructional practices, educators are equipped to address math learning gaps in real-time. Join Kristine Tipton, Innovation Coach at DeKalb County Central United School District, Ind., as she shares how she’s been able to use digital curriculum like DreamBox Learning® Math to support deeper learning at her schools.

Inside the Opt-Out Movement

There has been much press coverage about the current efforts by parents to pull their children out of standardized testing. As the opt-out movement grows, it is clear that parents are not taking their frustrations silently. Long dismissed as isolated incidents or the protests of a few "white suburban moms," this parent movement shows no signs of relenting.

In this webinar, Michael P. Evans of Miami University in Ohio will discuss his research findings on which parents are opting out, how the movement is galvanizing, and what it means for the future of K-12 policymaking. Jessica K. Beaver of Research for Action will delve into what the building movement might mean for state accountability systems, schools, and teachers. These researchers will draw on emerging data on opt-outs from their respective states. Given their long history with standards-based reform, Ohio and Pennsylvania make for interesting case studies on the movement's potential significance for K-12 assessment nationwide.

2015: Next Generation Assessment—Implementation and Results

Content provided by Measured Progress.

This webinar took place on March 3, 2015 @ 2 p.m. ETDownload the PowerPoint presentation.

How can districts prepare their students and teachers for the common-core-aligned tests this year? Efforts to align curriculum, instruction, and assessments with Common Core State Standards have intensified as the pressure escalates for states and districts that will administer the new summative tests to students this spring.

Join our guests to better understand two approaches to these challenges—one in a Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium state and one in a Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers state. And learn how school and district leaders are preparing teachers and students to meet the challenges with confidence.

The Rise of Kindergarten-Readiness Testing

Underwriting for the content of this webinar has been provided by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

This webinar took place on December 10, 2014 @ 2 p.m. ETDownload the PowerPoint presentation.

All 3,500 kindergarten teachers in Maryland are using a new readiness assessment this year that rests on teachers' observations of children's work and play to build a detailed picture of what they need as they begin the school year. Maryland's work reflects a national surge of activity in kindergarten-readiness testing. In this webinar, you'll hear early-childhood experts discuss the promise—and the risks—of kindergarten testing.

Reaching All Learners: Common Core Tests for Students With Significant Cognitive Disabilities

The Common Core State Standards and aligned tests have brought a momentous change to the way students with severe cognitive disabilities are assessed. Two federally-funded consortia, Dynamic Learning Maps and the National Center and State Collaborative, have been tasked with creating alternate assessments for this small population of students with widely diverse needs. The consortia are also working with teachers on developing common-core-based lesson plans that are appropriate for students with cognitive impairments. Join Neal Kingston, the project director for DLM, and Rachel Quenemoen, the project director for NCSC, as they discuss their approaches to assessing these students and the challenges and opportunities presented by this work.

What's Next in K-12 Assessment?

Underwriting for the content of this webinar has been provided by The Joyce Foundation.

This webinar took place on October 20, 2014 @ 3 p.m. ETDownload the PowerPoint presentation.

The assessment field in K-12 education is in a period of transition—sparked by widespread dissatisfaction with conventional testing formats, changes in technology, and developments in the learning sciences. In this webinar, two highly regarded experts in assessment innovation will discuss promising new and developing approaches to testing (both formative and summative) and how schools can begin integrating them into instructional programs. In particular, the presenters will address ways that assessment in schools can become more personalized and better integrated with learning, and used to provide deeper and timely information to educators. They will also make predictions about the future of assessment in schools.

This webinar took place on October 15, 2014 @ 2 p.m. ETDownload the PowerPoint presentation.

Cherry Creek Schools in Colorado are recognized for putting student achievement at the forefront of district digital initiatives. In this webinar, learn firsthand from the entire District Instructional Technology team how Cherry Creek Schools utilize their learning management system Schoology as the anchor for the district's vision, including:

• Innovating methods to help students prepare for state assessments
• Empowering parents to be a part of their child’s digital classroom
• Reimagining professional development with badges, learning outcomes, and peer collaboration

Webinar attendees will receive a high-level overview about Cherry Creek's district goals, as well as how Schoology brings Cherry Creek's 18,000+ Chromebook initiative to life, facilitates communication between district staff, teachers, students, and parents, and saves time with Google and SIS integrations. From the visionary to the tactical takeaways, attendees will leave this webinar inspired with new ideas.

Optimizing Your Network for Common Core Online Standardized Testing

Content provided by Aerohive Networks.

This webinar took place on May 22, 2014 @ 2 p.m. ETDownload the PowerPoint presentation.

With the adoption of common-core curriculum and online standardized testing, assuring network availability and performance in schools has never been more critical. Especially for those that support tablets, Chromebooks, and other mobile devices that lack Ethernet ports—school networks need to ensure secure and reliable access, provide ample bandwidth capacity, and have simplified management and troubleshooting tools for remediating coverage or performance issues that may impact testing applications.

In this webinar, you’ll hear directly from Jay McPhail, chief technology officer at Fullerton School District, Calif., and Jeremy Cunningham, network and systems engineer at Bryant public schools, Ark., about their recent wired and wireless deployments, and how they ensured high-availability and high-performance for their districts’ common-core testing. Additionally, Sree Kannan, senior solutions marketing manager at Aerohive Networks, will share steps you can take now to optimize your current wireless network.

What Should School Systems Expect During the Transition to the Common Core and Consortia Assessments?

Content provided by NWEA.

This webinar took place on May 2, 2014 @ 2 p.m. ETDownload the PowerPoint presentation.

The Common Core State Standards have shifted the focus in education away from basic proficiency toward preparing students to be college and career ready. Many districts are in the early stages of transitioning to assessments designed to measure student performance relative to these standards, and from this process, important trends have started to emerge, including:

• Cut scores are significantly higher on new common-core assessments than cut scores on previous proficiency assessments, which has resulted in notable declines in proficiency rates.
• The move to these new assessments has created a break in longitudinal data for many school systems, which makes it difficult to evaluate trends in student achievement.
• Districts may need to identify alternative data sources to help teachers better recognize their students’ strengths and weaknesses.

In this webinar, John Cronin will share early results from these new assessments and discuss issues that educators should consider throughout this transition process.

This webinar took place on April 24, 2014 @ 2 p.m. ETDownload the PowerPoint presentation.

School principals need support to face a tidal wave of challenges: new college and career readiness standards and assessments, new educator performance evaluation, fewer resources available to meet expanding student needs, and short timelines for improving performance. Leadership performance assessments can provide principal supervisors and coaches practical tools for not only evaluating, but also inspiring principal development—if they produce a holistic perspective on principal practice.

In this webinar, Matthew Clifford from American Institutes for Research (AIR) and Gail Connelly, executive director, National Association of Elementary School Principals discuss partnerships with states and districts for designing and using leadership performance assessments. Clifford will introduce a suite of tools developed by AIR and its partners for gaining a holistic perspective on leadership practice. Our speakers will discuss how supervisors and coaches are using observations, 360-degree surveys, portfolios, and growth plans to build leadership talent, and the critical roles of states and districts in supporting leadership assessment in the field.

Common-Sense Approaches to Math Curriculum and Assessment Success

Content provided by DreamBox Learning.

This webinar took place on April 22, 2014 @ 2 p.m. ETDownload the PowerPoint presentation.

Learn how to equip educators and students for success at a time when schools are being asked to do more with less—while meeting new math standards. Practical considerations and strategies will be addressed by our panel of math experts, who will discuss important topics in mathematics education and field audience questions throughout the session. They'll share insights about current trends and issues in mathematics education related to curriculum, assessment, and instruction that are applicable in all states and schools.

Join the conversation as they take a bird's eye view while also sharing on-the-ground classroom strategies and ideas for supporting increased achievement for all students. Key discussion topics include:

• Current trends and issues in math curriculum and instruction
• Formative and Summative Assessments
• Strategies to support achievement for all student populations

Ohio's 'Grand Experiment' in Performance Assessment: A How-To for States and Districts

Content provided by Measured Progress.

This webinar took place on March 31, 2014 @ 2 p.m. ETDownload the PowerPoint presentation.

The Ohio Department of Education has created a project that uses curriculum-embedded performance to encourage and measure deeper learning. The Ohio Performance Assessment Pilot Project uses Learning and Assessment Tasks to:
• Help students learn and apply skills in multiple contexts,
• Prepare them for the state's next-generation assessment program, and
• Train hundreds of teachers to evaluate student work, use the results to improve instruction, and create their own learning tasks.
This webinar will show how the OPAPP dyad system blends learning and assessment into unified tasks. We will also discuss the teacher training components of the project, as well as how curriculum-embedded performance assessment helps students acquire and demonstrate the skills needed to be truly college and workplace ready.

Building a Stronger Digital Link Between Learning and Assessment

This webinar has been sponsored by Amplify.

This webinar took place on March 19, 2014 @ 1 p.m. ETDownload the PowerPoint presentation.

Educators across the country are integrating digital tools into classrooms to build stronger links between instruction and assessment. The new tools are offering up real-time feedback on what children know, quick access to an array of tailored instructional materials, and important data for teachers to use to improve their own approaches—all in an effort to do a better job personalizing learning in ways that address students' individual strengths and weaknesses. This push to use digital tools for more customized assessment approaches is just beginning in most districts, prompting high hopes from educators, but concerns from critics that some of the tools are poorly designed. Our experts will address the promise and perils of this trend.

The Future of Math Education: A Panel Discussion of Promising Practices

Content provided by DreamBox Learning.

This webinar took place on Jan. 22, 2014 @ 2 p.m. ETDownload the PowerPoint presentation.

Join National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics (NCSM) President Valerie Mills, renowned educator and author Cathy Fosnot, and past NCTM and AMTE President Francis (Skip) Fennell for a conversation about the future of mathematics education. Everyone interested in the success of all students in learning mathematics—educators and community members—will gain valuable insights from these leaders.
Topics will include:
• Formative assessment
• Meeting the diverse needs of all students
• Common Core State Standards
• Digital learning technologies
The panel will also field questions from participants submitted during the session.

Presenters:

• Francis 'Skip' Fennell, professor of education, McDaniel College
• Cathy Fosnot, professor emeritus of childhood education, City College of New York and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York
• Valerie L. Mills, president, National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics; supervisor and mathematics education consultant, Oakland Schools, MichiganModerator:
• Tim Hudson, senior director of curriculum design, DreamBox Learning

This webinar took place on Jan. 16, 2014 @ 2 p.m. ETDownload the PowerPoint presentation.

The Next Generation Science Standards is not the first effort to improve achievement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—the STEM disciplines. Starting with the space race, policymakers and educators have questioned our ability to compete internationally in STEM subjects. With the proliferation of technology, that urgency has grown exponentially.

New assessments developed to align with these standards should require students to demonstrate their understanding not only of content, but also of scientific and engineering practices. Innovative science assessments could improve both knowledge and application for our students—so they'll be truly prepared with the skills needed for the jobs of the future.

In this webinar, science education and assessment experts:
• Highlight the promise of the NGSS,
• Explore state responses to the call for greater rigor in the sciences, and
• Describe how formative science assessment tools both focus instruction and prepare students for the challenge of the new standards.